


daniel in the den

by jonphaedrus



Category: Avatar: Legend of Korra
Genre: Gen, M/M, and bryke didn't totally ruin everything, au where amon isn't a bloodbender, book 2 not canon, old fic rewrite
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2014-04-21
Updated: 2014-05-13
Packaged: 2018-01-20 06:23:48
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 3
Words: 13,114
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1499984
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/jonphaedrus/pseuds/jonphaedrus
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A young man who can Airbend, with eyes that glow too-bright. A young woman, with a mastery of the earthly elements. An engineer, who dreams of something better.</p><p>When Avatar Aang fought Azula, for even a few moments, he died in the Avatar state. He recovered, and the cycle of the Avatar went on. Or did it? What if it didn't go quite right?</p><p>What if there were <i>two</i> Avatars?</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. denial

**Author's Note:**

  * For [theslowesthnery](https://archiveofourown.org/gifts?recipient=theslowesthnery), [wigglyflippingout](https://archiveofourown.org/gifts?recipient=wigglyflippingout).



> I wrote the original version of this story as a response to prompts on Tumblr in the summer of 2012, and I've been working on rewriting it for the past couple of months. This was written immediately after the end of season 1, and for that reason, the entirety of season 2 of LOK doesn't even calculate into this.
> 
> I really can't promise regular updates on this. I'm going to try, but I don't know how it's going to be. I will attempt to get at least one chapter up a month, but don't quote me on it. Hopefully the updates will be faster over the summer.
> 
> I hope you guys like this (and that it's better than the original version)!
> 
> I will say that this first chapter is about 4000 words longer than the original. It's long.

denial

_noun;_

_the action of declaring something to be untrue_

 

“Get down!” Lieu ducked automatically, jerked to the side, and spun to pivot on the ball of his foot, looking for the source of the shout. “To your left!” and he turned to the left, barely dodging a lashing whipcord of water, freezing in the air where he had been seconds before.

Out of the shadows of the alleyway ran a figure dressed in the same style of fatigues as Lieu was, mask knocked from his head, long Earth Kingdom style hair flying free behind him. Halora, with his narrow eyes and his strong arms. “What’s going on,” Lieu managed to say, before he had to flip backwards, skidding along the pavement to stop beside his friend. “Where are the others?”

Halora didn’t respond, just clenched his fists, and looked forward. 

Lieu knew what that meant. He held tight to his kali sticks.

“How do you feel about jumping off another building,” Halora said, voice quiet and even, a whisper that barely carried.

“I think that you’re starting to enjoy me leaping off of buildings a tad too much,” was all Lieu responded, but he looked to the side to follow the line of a ladder up the corner of a factory. Probably about forty feet off of the ground, with another roof nearby to land on. “Sure.” He saw Halora grin slightly, small and cold, out of the corner of his eye. 

“Good.” He reached behind him, even as the police approached, and pulled a smoke bomb, twisted the pin, and tossed it one handed.

“Get back!” Someone ahead shouted, and the Benders all stepped back and the smoke exploded.

Ten years, Lieu had been working with Halora. They had come up with their angry activist group in their tiny old factory apartment after Lieu being a mechanic was no longer important and Halora being an analyst was no longer important because neither of them could shoot lightning or move water through the pipes or make the huge gears grind the machines. They knew each other well now, well enough to work without needing to hold eyes or give orders.

In the smoke, Halora moved forward quietly and slowly on his soft-soled shoes, using the smoke as cover to take down cop after cop, while Lieu, in his heavier combat boots, ran across the pavement toward the ladder.

He was the distraction.

Scrambling up the ladder, loud clanging metal making all the cops follow him while Halora took them out, Lieu vaulted up onto the roof and came to a halt.

“Do you really think,” the man before him said, in a quiet, silky voice, “That after ten years, nobody’s learned your little tricks?” He had a smile that looked like the water in gutters, filled with oil, and eyes that were as cold as ice. “We’ve watched you, copied you, learned from you. And we know how you two work. You separate, you move apart.” His long hair, tied out of his face, made Lieu want to strangle him with it. His clothes were pristine, his mask superb.

“Hello, Councilman Tarrlok,” Lieu replied, grinning, all teeth. “What a pleasure to see you here.”

“See, you’re not the one I’m here to see.” Lieu held tight onto his kali sticks, resisted the urge to use his electricity— _only in emergencies,_ Hiroshi had said. _Keep it a secret as long as we can._ “Where’s your little leader?” 

“He’s taller than me,” Lieu pointed out, obtuse, and then kicked hard at a stone on the roof and sent it flying toward Tarrlok. 

A pipe to his left burst from a valve, showering water, and then Tarrlok ran at him, quick, ice and water spinning forward to try and hit him. That explained the water earlier. A hard tap to the back of the man’s right wrist with one stick and he swore, a hard slam behind his knee and Tarrlok stumbled.

And then, down below, Halora shouted in alarm and Lieu—froze. The smoke had cleared, and the officer on the ground had him in a neckgrip. His dark eyes were wide and his face matted with blood from a gash from his forehead. “Halora!” Lieu shouted, half moving forward, and found himself caught in a wave of water, dragging him back from the edge of the roof.

“Now now, Lieutenant. Let’s not be hasty.” He swore under his breath as Tarrlok came up close. “After all, you don’t want to make me angry.”

“Go to hell,” Lieu snapped back, and with his thumbs still free, flicked the switches on the bases of his kali sticks. There was a pause, and then the sparks flashed.

It was a bolster to his pride that Tarrlok definitely screamed louder of the two of them as he electrocuted them both, and when he released the charge they stumbled apart from each other, the Councilman’s watery hold broken, his body steaming, his eyes wrathful and wild.

He turned over his shoulder, stared down at Halora, desperately fighting for air, and said in a voice like the ice floes in the winter, “Kill him.”

The officer tightened his ropes, and Lieu met Halora’s eyes, saw the fear and pain and regret in them, and knew what he had to do.

He took advantage of his friend’s death to save his own life, and ran away.

\----- 

“We can’t keep going on like this,” Hiroshi’s words were quiet and shaken as he bandaged the last of Lieu’s gashes. “We can’t do it, Lieu.” His brown eyes were haunted, sleep deprived. “We need to change our strategy. If we keep going like this—“ he didn’t need to say any more. Lieu knew what was going to happen, if they kept going on like they were.

They weren’t going to last very long. “We need something to break the tie,” he said, finally, as Hiroshi stepped back.

“Lieu...” Hiroshi trailed off. “We can’t fight them off, not with what we have now. You, me, a handful of new recruits, and maybe twenty of the old guard?” Lieu stared down at his hands, and the lingering electrical burns, still staining his skin, now nearing a month old. “I’m tired, Lieu. You’re tired. We all are. We need someone to lead us.” They’d had this conversation twice already, and Lieu knew where it was going. He pushed himself to his feet, ignored the aches in his body. “If you—“

“I’m going for a walk,” he said, voice like lead. Hiroshi stopped, and looked away. He paused, and ran his fingers through his hair. “Hiroshi...I can’t. I’m not charismatic. I’m not a leader. I’m just...the lieutenant.” Hiroshi looked like he wanted to say something else, and shook his head. “I need some fresh air, I need to think.” 

“I’ll get back to work, then.” Hiroshi sighed. “You know where I am, Lieu.” He stepped forward, and for a moment, they clasped forearms. “If you want to talk—“

“We’ll get out of this,” he said, with finality. And then, because he saw the exhaustion and the emptiness of Hiroshi’s eyes, smiled. “We’ve been fighting ten years too long to give up now.” He smiled, after a moment, and Hiroshi smiled back. Then they split, and went their separate ways—Hiroshi back to his workroom, and Lieu for his bedroom, shedding the rest of his uniform, cut up badly as it was, and changed into nondescript streetclothes, combed his hair free of the mess it was from his mask, and then shifted to put on the smaller, lighter generator for just one kali stick, more suited to a quiet walk in the dark.

Nothing was that quiet, though. Not anymore. If you went out at night, you were going to run into trouble.

He paused at the mirror, and glanced into it for a moment, and sobered at his reflection. There were circles under his eyes, and grey hairs grown in at his temples. 

He left, and climbed through the sewers to emerge onto street level, pushing the sewer cover back over the ladder that lead, eventually, down to Equalist headquarters, and began to walk. In the darkness of the slums of Republic City, he listened to the wind, kicked an empty can that rolled and clanked along the pavement, and whistled into the darkness to tell any people hiding that there was someone coming, give them time to scatter if they wished. You could never be too careful in the city at night.

Halora was dead, and had been for near a month now. With him gone, things hadn’t recovered well. Lieu was the de-facto leader of the Equalists with him gone, and he wasn’t charismatic enough to do it right. He could talk, yes, but without substance. He did, instead of spoke. He could lead an army to victory in planning, but he couldn’t rally them to go to war in the first place. What they needed was someone who people would listen to: someone who could see their strategies from the outside, plan to get their remaining members out of jail or back underground.

Until that happened, they would just keep scraping by under Tarrlok’s nose, hiding, and waiting, for the inevitable day that he figured out that they were in the tunnels under the city, rounded them up, and destroyed them.

They needed a breath of fresh air.

In hindsight, Lieu realised that perhaps, he had meant literally.

In the darkness of the alleyways, Lieu didn’t see anyone until, twenty feet ahead of him, a voice screamed, “Leave me alone!” and he stopped dead, frozen, eyes wide and body alert. “I don’t have anything for you to take!” The voice was shrill with fear, and there were footsteps in the alleyway.

Lieu reached slowly for his kali stick, moving carefully, trying not to make any noise—but it didn’t matter, because a moment later the darkness of the night was interrupted by a plume of fire blossoming out of the alley and a figure flying along behind it that hit the opposite wall hard. The person slid down to the ground, and started screaming, hoarse and quiet.

“Hey,” he forgot his worries about his people, about everything else, for a broken kid on the pavement. Lieu hurried over and knelt beside the figure, trying to see his face. “Hey, are you all right?” Short, dark brown hair had fallen over the boy’s face, concealing his expression. “Kid?” He was wearing water tribe clothes that had begun to fade with use and age, patched badly, falling apart. Lieu reached out, and was about to set his hand on the young man’s knee, when he looked up. 

He had eyes that were a blue so pale they were almost grey, like the stormclouds gathering on the horizon at sea, and his skin was now covered in angry, weeping, gaping burns. His skin was smoking. Lieu could see bone.

Something deep inside Lieu, something important, flicked, like a switch. He moved before he could stop, and stood in front of the kid. He clenched his fists, slid into a loose stance. Out of the alleyway sauntered three men, and the lead one kept snapping his fingers, sending out sparks and little flames. Lieu bared his teeth. 

“And just what,” he said quietly, “Makes you think you can do that.”

The man in the lead with the fire grinned, cocksure and _stupid._ “He fucked with us. Besides, now he’s got a real nice scar. Plenty of women will get work when he pays them for an hour between the sheets.” It took every ounce of his self control for Lieu to not run forward and punch the man so hard in his teeth that they went out the back of his skull. “Taught him a lesson and gave work to the nice girls down on the docks. Two birds with one stone.” Lieu could feel his teeth grinding. Maybe not punch him in the teeth. Maybe kick him in the groin so hard his nuts flew out his nose.

“I would say that people like you disgust me, but you aren’t worth even calling people,” he whispered, low and dangerous. The man with the fire’s expression got a lot colder a lot quicker, his eyes narrowing. “You’re monsters, crippling a child for life for _sport_.” 

“Nobody ever said you needed a face to live,” the Firebender’s voice was a lot colder now. His friends were shifting to the side. “You got a problem with us, pal?” He reached up and pulled down the brim of his hat. “Because this is Triple Threat territory. I don’t _think_ you want to have a problem with us.”

“Yeah,” Lieu replied, and he could feel his heart beating, loud and fast in his ears, the adrenaline in his veins pumping. “I do.”

And then it all happened very quickly.

Simultaneously, the Earthbender to the Firebender’s left slammed his foot into the ground and a massive spike of earth shot out just below where Lieu had been standing before—but he’d already run forward, kicking hard off of the ground to flip over the Waterbender’s head while he was distracted, and hit his Chi spots hard along his spine, left him useless, and kicked his legs out from under him, downing him. With the surprise gone, a burst of flame scythed over where his head would have been if he hadn’t ducked, and Lieu rolled along the ground, dodging a line of bursting earth trying to break his spine, and then back to his feet.

He drew his yantok, flicked the switch, and felt the crackle of electricity race through the metal, making his hand vibrate with the power, and he slammed it, hard, into the back of the Firebender’s knee. He went down on one leg with a shout, and Lieu was about to jump for the Earthbender, trying to raise a boulder above his head, when—

A blast of air slammed hard into the man’s chest, and he slammed hard into the wall behind him, his stone dropping to the ground, before another blast of air sent him flying and he sailed down the alleyway into the darkness and out of sight. There was the distant sound of him hitting a pile of trash bins, clanging metal, and then silence.

A glance to his left revealed that the kid with the burned face had half-stood, leaning hard on the wall behind him, and his left hand was raised in a fist. His expression was impossible to read, but Lieu knew his stance. _Determination._

He had found an Airbender.

There wasn’t time to think about the meaning behind that. Bender or Non-Bender, rights didn’t matter. He didn’t really care, when these three men had done what they had done. They deserved whatever they got. This kid had just as much of a right as anyone to be protected.

He jerked out of his thoughts just in time to roll to the side, dodging another shot of flame from the Firebender, who was starting to get desperate. 

Lieu kicked the man hard in his side, and he slumped over. Three electric shocks from his yantok to the spine and the man fell hard and boneless to the ground, breathing shallow and eyes glazed. 

In the quiet then, Lieu looked up, breathing heavy, to stare at the kid leaning against the wall. What he had done seemed to have taken the last strength out of him, and he slid down the wall to fall boneless to the ground. Carefully switching off his electricity and putting his yantok away, Lieu carefully approached, moving slow, with his hands up. “Hey, kid,” the boy didn’t respond. He’d begun to cry again, quiet and low. “Are you all right?” Well, he wasn’t, but he had asked anyway. 

“Please just leave me alone,” the boy whispered, his voice quiet and cracking. He didn’t move from where he was slumped on the ground.

“Look, I just want to get you back to Air Temple Island. That’s all.” The Equalists had never concentrated on the Airbenders, since Tenzin had always fought hard for Non-Bender rights, and the children were innocent of anything evil—but this kid had to be something around fourteen. He hadn’t known that Tenzin had any children that age.

Finally, he young man looked up at him, not even touching his face, looking between his fingers. “Who?” he finally asked, and Lieu froze. “I have...no idea who you are talking about.” 

“Oh.” Lieu stared back at him. He hesitated, and stepped closer. “I’ll get you to a healer, then, they should be able to halt some of the scarring—“

“ _Please,_ ” the boy’s voice broke, and his eyes, which had been so strong, showed fear. “Please, please. Don’t.” Lieu froze, and then nodded. 

“Okay. No healers.” The boy slid back, pressed himself against the wall. “No Bending, nothing. I swear.” The boy kept watching him, like a cornered animal. “Please.” Hesitantly, the young man uncurled slightly. “I might not be able to stop the scarring, but I can at least keep you from getting infected.” The boy kept watching him, carefully, ready for any treachery. Lieu extended his hand. “Will you come with me?”

Finally, the kid reached out, and took his hand.

Before the Benders ever were able to get up, Lieu had picked him up, and carried him safely down the tunnels, deep into the labyrinthine sewers.

\----- 

It took months for the young man, who had introduced himself as Amon, to heal. Every day of that time, refusing to let anyone else anywhere near him, Lieu had sat and carefully changed the bandages over the young man’s face. He was reserved to the point of being taciturn, and when he did speak, never minced words.

Once, while they had been sitting across from each other, Lieu crouched on a deskchair and Amon cross-legged on his bed, staying still and wincing only as the linen of his bandages pulled free of his half-healed burns, still weeping as they were, he had let it slip without meaning: 

“So you’re an Airbender.” Amon had frozen, like a deerrat in the headlights of a Satomobile. His mouth, what remained, twisted slightly, and then he winced at the stretch of his skin. “It’s not a bad thing,” Lieu said a moment later, daubing salve onto the scarring forming over his forehead. “We have a few others, people who were targeted, like you were. Or people who are tired of it.” Nobody already in the Equalists had been upset by another Bender joining them, he was simply an asset, and proof that change could come from the other side of the line. “I just always thought that Tenzin was the last of the Airbenders.” 

After a moment, Amon pulled away from his hands slightly, and shifted awkwardly, huddling back behind one shoulder and staring off to the side. “I don’t know,” he answered, finally, and his voice was cracked and quiet. “Nobody knows. My parents never knew why, none of our relatives or friends, not even the head of our Tribe.” Awkwardly, Amon rubbed his arm. “At first, they thought that I might be the Avatar, but I never was able to do anything but Airbend, no matter what they tried. Once Korra of the Southern Water Tribe was found, I was just passed off as a curiosity.” Lieu paused, scratched his chin.

“Must be genetics.” Amon looked up at him, head tilted slightly to the side, waiting for the explanation. “Maybe once there was an Airbender in your family tree. It’s been known to skip multiple generations plenty of times before. I wouldn’t be surprised if that was the case.” Amon stared a moment longer, sighed, and shrugged.

“Maybe.” 

But he had held still, let Lieu put the healer’s salve on him night after night, bandage his burns, carefully clean them with a damp cloth, wait until they were scarred over. He waited, and listened, and gave advice, and when he healed, Amon officially joined as a member of the Equalists.

He took to Chiblocking quickly, following Lieu’s instructions to prove himself an incredibly fast study, preferring to use less obvious methods than his Airbending, to keep from drawing attention. And, as he became more of a part of the Equalists, people started to rally behind him. Quiet he might have been, but Amon was shrewd and intense, and when he spoke, he did so with meaning. 

He was much better than Lieu, who was good at hitting things and fixing things, but not particularly good at polite conversation. He much preferred being the stick of the ‘speak softly and carry a big stick’ equation.

And, at fifteen, Amon began to attend planning meetings. He advised Lieu and Hiroshi on problems both mundane and serious, where his outside eye could give advice neither of them could find on their own. He started to add inventive new ideas to Lieu’s old strategies, and they started to make headway against Tarrlok and the Police—and somewhere, in it all, Lieu never realised when he had stopped leading the stern young man, and started following just behind his right shoulder instead.

\----- 

The first rally Amon ever led was a resounding success. It hadn’t taken much convincing on Lieu’s part to make him do it—most of the members of the Equalists, old and new alike, treated him as a leader already. Standing up there square on stage with his face hidden under a mask to keep his scars out of sight and out of light, he looked so much older than fifteen. 

He wasn’t that tall, not yet. He would probably never be as tall as Lieu was, but he still had years to grow. His voice cracked when he got too excited, so he spoke slowly and intensely, meaning every word he said and making his speech stronger for it. And, when Lieu stood back, arms crossed behind his back, smiling under his mask as a crowd of people applauded, he knew that Amon was more charismatic than he would ever be as well.

He was still fifteen under the carefully ironed uniform and stoic mask—he hated having to do chores, he would spend long hours locked into his bedroom and avoiding everyone when he wasn’t needed, and got awkward crushes on people and then would avoid looking them in the eye for a week. You would never have known, though, if you had just listened to him talk. He spoke like a politician born and raised.

After the rally, in the alleyway beside the building, Lieu climbed onto his motorcycle and kicked up the stand, starting it up and letting it idle as Amon climbed up behind him, settled into his seat, and wrapped his arms around Lieu’s waist.

“That went well,” he sighed, leaning against Lieu’s shoulder, the cool porcelain of his mask pressing into Lieu’s skin through the cloth of his uniform.

“Celebratory noodles, then?” Lieu replied, shifting the bike so that they could start, getting settled, gripping the handlebars carefully through his gloves. Then, he paused, and added, “With sea prunes.”

“I will agree if there are sea prunes,” Amon replied, in his most serious voice, and Lieu laughed under his breath, shaking his head as he revved up his bike and drove out of the alleyway, turning onto the street and—

Slammed hard on the breaks and skidded sideways to a halt as four police cars came around the corner, and Amon behind him sucked in an annoyed breath.

“Looks like we aren’t going to be getting sea prunes,” he murmured, and Lieu snorted.

“Where there’s a will, there’s a way,” and Amon laughed into the back of his neck just as Lieu slammed on the gas again and they took off racing down the road, throwing up a cloud of smoke behind him, Amon’s hands locked tight around Lieu’s waist. Lieu could feel both of their heartbeats pounding, and he wasn’t sure which one of them was which, both of them racing high with adrenaline. They twisted down streets, shot along straight stretches, and his bike was fast, but the police cars, being pushed along by Metalbenders and with a head-start, were faster. “Get me a tailwind!” he shouted over the rushing wind in both of their ears, and he could feel Amon nodding, slightly, into the back of his shoulders.

He pulled one hand out form around Lieu’s waist, and when the younger man tore the wind apart around them, Lieu floored the gas and his bike _shot_ forward, racing along the pavement. 

It was exhilarating. 

The police couldn’t possibly keep up. Faster, more manoeuvrable, Lieu led them around incredibly tight corners, down thin alleyways, through twisting empty lots and in circuitous routes around buildings until they had lost all but one of their pursuers, who still doggedly kept on. A glance into one of his side-mirrors showed the tell-tale blue and three tailed hairstyle of Tarrlok in the driver’s seat, and the glinting uniform and steely hair of Chief Beifong riding in the passenger’s side. They were nearly at a bridge, and on the other side, Lieu knew he could lose them in the twisting, complex streets of Republic City’s Jazan district.

And, just as they crossed the bridge, there was a rumble, and from where the paved streets had turned to stone a massive ramp shot upward, a wall of earth. _Earthbenders._

There was no time to stop, slow down, or try to do anything else. They hit the ramp hard, flying at too steep an angle to land, and Amon threw himself free with a blast of air—Lieu trusted him to land better than he trusted _himself_ to land—and as he lost control of his bike he managed to let go just in time to land hard on his shoulder, rolling to absorb the impact before he twisted and jumped to his feet. He was going to have a hell of a bruise on his back in the morning, but at the moment all he did was roll his arm to keep it from stiffening, pulling both his kali sticks and ignoring the twinge of pain in his now-injured arm. 

He could hold a stick, at least.

As the motorcycle went careening off to crash into a wall, Lieu managed to get a few feet closer to Amon, lighting up his Kali sticks as the car skidded to a stop on the bridge and Beifong leapt out, shooting wires toward them both.

It was a split-second decision. 

Lieu threw himself forward, flipping over Amon’s head, to catch and twist the metal around both of his sticks, and he turned the power on his sticks higher until they _lanced_ lightning down the wires, and Beifong screamed and tried to retract, still caught, until she managed to get her wires loose and stumbled, nearly fell over.

They didn’t use electricity that was lethally strong, not like Lightningbending, but they sure as hell used stuff that was strong enough to knock you out. With Beifong out of the picture, there was a lot less to deal with—but there was still Tarrlok, coming up behind her, and the rest of the police cars skidding into position.

Lieu grit his teeth, and suddenly regretted not bringing more Equalists with them. Probably would have come in handy, but that couldn’t be changed now—they would catch up when they could. Right now there were two of them, against more Metalbending police officers than Lieu honestly wanted to face down—plus Tarrlok.

 _Tarrlok._  

Lieu paused, and glanced to Amon. Like this, you couldn’t tell he was fifteen; he stared down their opponents like a man as battle-hardened as Lieu himself. He was standing with his shoulders squared, and by the light of the full moon Lieu could see the narrow lines of his eyes behind the porcelain of his mask, could see the tenseness in his jaw.

Amon was really the closest thing they had to a real leader. Someone everyone could look at and say, _I follow him._ Lieu was a Lieutenant. He was bait. He was good at making a show and getting his ass kicked.

Amon came first.

Their eyes met for a moment, and Amon nodded once, curtly. That was the only order that Lieu needed, the only instruction that he had to follow. They had trained together, drilled together, from day one. Amon knew everything Lieu knew, plus more—they could follow each other in a fight as easy as breathing. They moved simultaneously, Amon pulling out a bolo and tossing it, the thing whipping around in the air like a slingshot to catch two approaching cops around the neck, knocking them to the ground in a tangled knot and probably putting them down for the fight.

Tarrlok came running forward next, sweeping a massive wave of water up and over the bridge, icing it as it flew toward them. Lieu slid hard along the ground (glad for his kneepads) to dodge it, and took Tarrlok’s moment of surprise to crack him hard in the small of the back with one stick—just in time for Amon to launch himself up and over the wave, catching two metal cables in midair around his gloves. He jerked the two police officers forward and slammed them hard against each other and they tumbled to the ground before Amon landed next to Beifong and swept her feet out from under her. She was still moving slow from her shock, and she went down hard with Amon’s extra attention. 

He threw himself into the fray, and for a moment Lieu glanced at Tarrlok, who was still in aftershocks, and then followed Amon to take down the rest of the regular police officers, their numbers a lot more dangerous than one Bender who was too badly shocked to get up, and another who was likely confused by the way they had so rapidly turned the tide of battle.

It was stupid of him.

He should never have left Tarrlok unsupervised, even for a minute, because Lieu didn’t realise until he tried to move (and _then_ it was too late) that his legs were iced to the ground up to his knees. Desperately struggling to break free of it, Lieu looked over his shoulder when Tarrlok shouted, “Enough!”

Amon froze. He looked over, his face hidden entirely by the moonlight, just in time for Tarrlok to take advantage of Lieu being completely trapped to twist water around his wrists and slam his yantoks into his knees.

Only his boots themselves and his gloves were rubber. With the ice, it had something to conduct on, and Lieu screamed as he electrified himself, only staying standing by virtue of the ice wrapped up almost to his knees. Shaking, desperately trying to even out his breath, Lieu had nothing he could do when Tarrlok grabbed the top of his head and jerked back his mask and goggles. 

Without them there, laying a green filter that made it easier to see during the night, Lieu could see the moon—it was clear, bright, white, shining down with a light that shot everything into stark relief. Amon’s mask glowed, the uniforms of the Metalbenders glinted. The water below the bridge rippled and threw up splashes that refracted the light. Their shadows were all stark and heavy on the dark pavement. He panted, staring at Amon, who was still frozen—only for two cops to twist metal lines around his elbows and hands.

He started moving again too late, desperately struggling against the bonds, trying to kick off the two men. “Let him go!” He shouted, and in his desperation, his voice cracked in the middle. It reminded Lieu how _young_ he was. He just panted, and tried not to close his eyes.

Tarrlok pulled his head further back and stared down at him, lips pursed, eyes narrowed. “You’re just an old man,” he spat, and Lieu closed his eyes. “What are you, mixed-blood?” Lieu clenched his fists, breathed through his teeth. “Trash.” Breathe. In. Out. “Get a photo, boys. I want pictures of the both of them without their masks before we kill them. Their Lieutenant and the _poster boy._ ”

Kill them.

Tarrlok was going to do to them what he had done to Halora. There would be no jail, there would be no trial. They would both die here. Lieu they could lose, but Amon—without Amon—

“Go!” Lieu shouted, twisting against Tarrlok, screaming at Amon. “Get out, run, there’s still time!” With his Airbending, he knew Amon could get free, could run, could escape. He just had to use it.

“No!” Amon screamed back, twisting against the police officers, looking around wildly as one of them tried to approach to wrench his mask off. “Lieutenant!”

“Now, see, you’ve gone and made him hard to capture,” Tarrlok tsk-ed his tongue, and Lieu had the sudden urge to punch him into a brick wall—he was incredibly sleazy. “Fine.” The councilman let him go and for a moment Lieu panted, trying to get his hands out of the water they were trapped in, tried to wrench his legs free as Tarrlok bent down, and wrenched one of his kali sticks from his hand. 

Lieu froze.

“Let’s see how much you like it.”

He had a split-second before Tarrlok leaned forward and pressed it, hard, up against the back of his skull.

It was all pain. Without his mask to redistribute the shock, it went right into his spine and bones, and Lieu couldn’t see anything, his vision too clouded. He was screaming. Someone was screaming. It wouldn’t kill him, he knew it wouldn’t kill him, they had designed it to never shock hard enough to kill, but there was a fear. _What if they hadn’t._

The air around him felt too thick, too heavy. He was trapped. The moon kept shining, cold and high above them, and then—

And then something _broke._

 _“No!”_ Lieu heard Amon’s distant shout, and he managed to look far enough forward to see the young man blast air around him, tossing every one of the policemen away. In surprise, Tarrlok hand slipped and the yantok stopped touching his skin, and Lieu slumped forward, his weight finally cracking the ice until he landed hard on his knees, and he only managed to avoid faceplanting into the pavement by shifting one shoulder just slightly. He couldn’t move, his body twisting and jerking in the aftershocks as the electricity worked its way out of his system, but he watched in quiet awe at the other side of the bridge.

Amon was twisting, wind following him, slamming officers away, tossing more than one down into the water. The moonlight glittered on him, made him look inhuman, his eyes impossibly bright behind his mask.

And then Lieu realised, in his hazy pain-state, that his eyes _were_ impossibly bright behind his mask. They were white, glowing. A pillar of air began to form under him, twisting him up, his hood flying backwards and his dark hair whipping in the wind, his hands stretched out to the sides.

Tarrlok and Beifong were frozen, staring at him. 

“Is that— _the Avatar?”_ Tarrlok’s voice was a quiet whisper of awe, and Lin, barely on her feet, murmured, 

“It can’t be—“

And then, Amon made some sort of inhuman noise, and both of them were hit by a massive blast of air. They went sailing out of Lieu’s field of vision until he heard the distant noises of the two of them crashing into walls. The remaining police officers fled like leaves before the storm, smarter than their Chief, as the water of the river under the bridge started to be blasted upward by the air. The cars that the police had come in went flying, like they weighed nothing, to crash into each other, or into buildings.

Lieu stared, almost in disbelief, at Amon. The winds swirled around him, his eyes glowed, until slowly the light went out of him and he floated back down to the ground and then stumbled, hard, went to his knees for a moment. 

It seemed remarkably dark, without his eyes glowing. Calm, without his winds. Amon pushed himself to his feet, almost fell back over, shaking as he half-ran, half-tripped to land at Lieu’s side. His hands were trembling, and he was breathing like he had just run a mile. Lieu could barely move, but Amon grabbed his shoulders, started to turn him over. “No,” he whispered, and there was a fear in his voice Lieu hadn’t heard since the night they had met. “You’re fine, you’re going to be _fine,_ you’re all right—“ he was shaking. His fingers were shaking.

“You _are_ the Avatar,” Lieu whispered, his voice hoarse, staring back at the younger man. He heard cars and motorcycles screeching to a halt, realised it was the rest of the Equalists, caught up at last. “You are.”

Amon’s grey eyes, like the calm before the storm, stared back at him, wide behind his mask in shocked terror and the horror of mixed realisation. 

They had found the Avatar.


	2. acceptance

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Amon grows, the Lieutenant teaches, and Avatar Korra comes to Republic City.
> 
> \-----
> 
> A young man who can Airbend, with eyes that glow too-bright. A young woman, with a mastery of the earthly elements. An engineer, who dreams of something better.
> 
> When Avatar Aang fought Azula, for even a few moments, he died in the Avatar state. He recovered, and the cycle of the Avatar went on. Or did it? What if it didn't go quite right?
> 
> What if there were two Avatars?

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> First of all, this chapter is dedicated to mangsney on tumblr, and the work as a whole remains dedicated to Harp and Hnery.
> 
> This chapter ended up only being about 3000 words longer than the original, and that's because I ended up adding quite a few scenes, as well as changing quite a few, and cutting even more. It's becoming clear to me that in order to write this fic in a way that better makes sense and follows the plot of the show, I'm likely going to have to add a chapter—and that's all right. It means getting this finished will take a little while longer, though. Thanks to everyone reading this for their patience with updates!
> 
> a few small notes: 1) i have no idea why lieu sometimes refers to himself as lieu and sometimes as the lieutenant. he just does. so i'll just leave that to his own internal voice and not question it too much 2) the random amon pov kind of snuck into this chapter unexpectedly, in the original version he didn't have any until i think the third chapter at the earliest. still, it works, so i guess he's going to be poving a lot more often than in the original version.
> 
> i hope to have the next chapter maybe posted later this month or sometime in early june, free time permitting!

acceptance

_noun:_

_the action of consenting to receive or undertake something offered_

 

 

 

“Well, it’s going to scar, but you’ll be fine,” the nurse snapped off her gloves as she finished tying off the bandages around Lieu’s neck, and he sighed in relief. “No lasting damage of any sort. Just be careful and take it easy the next few days. Your muscles have taken a real beating tonight; give them some time to get back on an even kilter.” She walked around him and smiled, squeezed his shoulder. “You’ve got nothing to worry about, Lieutenant.” 

“Are you sure?” Amon had been pacing the whole time Lieu had been in the infirmary, getting close to wearing a line in the stone floor, his hands twisting behind his back. There was an element of repressed terror in his voice, but he was in control. Mostly.

“Amon,” Lieu said, quietly, rubbing his aching shoulders and trying to avoid jarring the bandages over the burn on the back of his neck, “if she says I’m going to be fine, I trust her.” Mei-Yi, one of their best-trained nurses, just smiled. She’d gotten halfway through medical school before the new rules about only Healers allowing to be doctors had been enacted, and she’d come to them with flames in her eyes and hands that knew how to save.

“Sir, it will be a scar, and honestly, you’ll probably forget how you even got it.” Mei-Yi gently helped him stand and handed him his mask, goggles, harness, and generator, and he took them, carefully putting them all under his arms. “Just make sure you come to me to get the bandages changed every day.” Lieu had been an engineer for years; a few electrical burns were nothing new. It would heal on its own in time. “Go get some rest.” She clapped him on the shoulder and he smiled back at her before he tried to take a few steps and his weak, exhausted, injured knees half-gave out. 

For one rapid, startling moment, Lieu almost fell to the floor, only for Amon to step forward and catch him as he stumbled, hard, into the younger man’s chest. He was a sturdy, immovable force, rooted to the floor, expectant.

“Let me,” Amon told him, carefully slipping under Lieu’s arm to give him support, taking the generator from him and carrying it in his free hand, propping his Lieutenant up with the other. 

They walked through the long underground hallways, cool with the usual chill of the sewers, and neither of them said anything. The silence between them was incredibly awkward—possibly for the first time, Lieu realised. Immediately after the (revelation? Was revelation even the right word for what he had witnessed with Amon?) revelation that Amon had showed, the rest of the Equalists had arrived, and everything between them scaring off the last of the police officers and helping Lieu into the truck had just been too quick for either of them to say anything.

Amon’s quiet words in the infirmary were all that he had said since his eyes had glowed. Otherwise, Lieu had done all the talking.

Mostly, it was because he didn’t know what to say. He was the only one of the Equalists who had seen, the only one of them who knew. He was sure that Beifong and Tarrlok were already following their own leads, looking for information, for answers. He had no leads to follow, none but Amon himself, and he didn’t seem inclined to talk about it in the least. 

Finally, when they reached the Lieutenant’s quarters, he reached over to unlock his door with the code (no keys, it was too dangerous to carry them with Metalbender cops around), and Amon kept leaning against him, like if he moved away Lieu was just going to fall over.

If he was being completely honest with himself, the Lieutenant kind of was afraid that he _might._

Still, when he got the door open and Amon helped him limp over to flick on the bedside lamp, he sighed, dumping his discarded uniform pieces onto the desk before he stared at his hands. He’d broken a fingernail sometime during the fight. It seemed so petty and stupid, but it was cracked and oozing blood slightly, very slowly. It hadn’t hurt at the time—it still didn’t hurt.

“Here,” Amon said at last, breaking the silence between them. Lieu looked up to see the younger man holding out his generator, and he took it and added it to the pile on the desk—where it was likely going to stay for at least a few days, until his knees were going to take abuse again. Amon kept staring at him, grey eyes reflecting the light of the desklamp, before he walked over to the bed and finally sat down, heavily. 

For the first time, the Lieutenant wondered if maybe, just maybe, being fifteen and bearing so much weight was starting to catch up with him.

It had fallen silent again, so at last, Lieu sighed and leaned against his desk, folded his hands comfortably over his thighs. “Did you know you could do that?” Amon looked up, and then looked back down, staring at his hands. He shook his head.

“No,” he said at last. “I had no idea. It’s...never happened before.”

Lieu nodded. “It certainly looked like the stories I’ve heard.” They’d all heard them, the history of Avatar Aang defeating Fire Lord Ozai. Glowing eyes, mastery of the elements, and then exhaustion and almost no idea of what he had done. But Amon wasn’t the Avatar—he wasn’t. He couldn’t be. It didn’t make any sense. Walking over to sit down next to Amon on the bed, groaning quietly, Lieu leaned his knee to bump against the younger man’s, and Amon sagged to lean on his shoulder. “Do you think you could do it again?”

“I don’t know.” He paused, clearly thinking. “Probably.” Lieu felt the younger man move, fumbling, until Amon lowered his hands, holding the white porcelain of his mask. He sighed, heavily. “I just...I was so _angry,_ Lieu. Tarrlok, he...Bending is unfair enough, but he turned your own weapon against you. He gained nothing from it. He wasn’t even doing it to hurt you—he was doing it to hurt _me._ ” Amon was shaking slightly, his fingers trembling against the porcelain of his mask. “I just—“

“I’m _fine,_ ” Lieu whispered, pulling him closer, and Amon turned to tuck his face down against the cloth of Lieu’s shirt. They stayed like that for a long time, Lieu rubbing unconscious circles on the younger man’s bicep through the cloth of his uniform. “I’ve had worse injuries in the past, I’ll have worse ones in the future. It was cruel, but I’ll survive. I might be getting up there in years now, but I’m perfectly sturdy.” In response, Amon snorted into the cloth of his shoulder.

“You’re forty-two. That’s not old.”

“Old enough that my knees don’t work the same way they used to. I’m starting to slow down.” Comparatively, fifteen was so _young._ Lieu couldn’t even imagine being in the position Amon was in at fifteen. He couldn’t have begun to comprehend it. Patting Amon on the arm, Lieu carefully got to his feet and took his time crossing over to his closet. He moved gingerly, slow—he took it easy on his legs as he carefully start taking off his clothes; belt on its peg, tunic dumped in the dirty clothes pile, and then paused as he struggled to get off his boots without bending his knees.

He left his socks on, because his legs hurt too much.

Pulling a clean shirt from his closet, leaving his pants on until Amon left, Lieu didn’t notice the pair of pale grey eyes staring at the strong lines of his muscles under the bandages around his neck and shoulders. He didn’t notice that anyone was watching at all. By the time he’d pulled his shirt on and turned around, Amon was looking back down at his hands again—like nothing had ever happened.

“Amon...” The Lieutenant’s voice was quiet, but it carried in his bedroom, until Amon at last looked up. “I...” He wasn’t really sure what to say. “I don’t think you being fifteen is a problem.” Amon stared back at him, and then shrugged one shoulder and looked back down at his hands. “You’re the face of the Equalists. You’re our leader, and isn’t a single person I would trust more in that position. If you really are the Avatar it doesn’t change that—“

“I’m _not!”_ Amon shouted it, voice cracking, and he stood rapidly, turning his back on the Lieutenant, his shoulders hunched. “I’m _not_ the Avatar.” His posture closed off, and Lieu noticed almost too late that his shoulders were shaking. “I never have been. I never will be.”

It was so easy to forget that he was fifteen. But he was—fifteen, and scared.

“They tried... _everything_ when I was a child, Lieu. Everything. They put me in life-threatening situations. They nearly _drowned_ me to see if I would go into the Avatar State to save myself.” Amon curled his arms around himself, still shaking. “Whatever the White Lotus didn’t try, my parents tried. It _never worked,_ Lieu. Never.” Amon hung his head. “I’m just an Airbender. That’s all I ever was. That’s all that I ever will be. Whatever I did, it was a fluke. It was an _accident._ ” The Lieutenant clenched his jaw, and after a moment, he walked across the room and wrapped one arm around the younger man’s shoulders, tugged him over until Amon leaned into his chest and made a wet noise into his shoulder.

“That’s fine,” the Lieutenant said, quietly. “It’s fine. You are what you are, Amon—Airbender or Avatar, whatever it is, you’re my leader either way.” Curling his arms further about Amon, the Lieutenant waited until his leader wrapped his arms back around his waist and leaned closer.

He would probably have been crying, if his face hadn’t been completely burned off.

“You don’t have to try to be something you arent.”

They stood together in the darkness for a long time, listening to the quiet, before Amon composed himself, and left to go to sleep.

Lieu didn’t fall asleep for hours—he lay in bed, arms folded behind his head, thinking. Thinking about glowing eyes, and maybe, just maybe, that Amon was wrong.

\----- 

A blast of air jetted past the Lieutenant’s head and he ducked, resisting the urge to bite his tongue with concentration lest he accidentally chomp down on it, swiping toward Amon with both the wooden kali sticks he held. The younger man twisted out of the attack, letting them whisk over his head before he shot another jet of air that cause Lieu to flip backwards, landing with his legs well spread. Two more air blasts and he dodged them both, diving toward Amon’s side. He used the younger man’s lack of peripheral vision to his advantage, aiming to block the chi in his right arm, but as he tried to jab his sticks into the pressure points, Amon spun, caught his left arm in a tight grip with his knee.

The Lieutenant had a split-second of realisation before Amon twisted, pivoted, and flipped him bodily over. His legs cleared the ground uncomfortably quickly, and Lieu landed hard on the ground on his back, winded. He stared up at the ceiling and made a pained noise somewhere between _oh_ and _ow._

Amon came over and leaned down to look at Lieu, his hood falling further down over his face, hands on his knees. “Are you all right?” he asked, panting, out of breath from a twenty-minute sparring session, and Lieu groaned a pained affirmation.

“You’re getting better at that,” he said when he had his breath back, as Amon sat down and took the towel Lieu had knotted into his belt to wipe off his neck. “I’m lucky you didn’t dislocate my shoulder.”

“I made sure I didn’t,” Amon said, and the Lieutenant could _hear_ the smile in his voice. “I don’t know if that move will ever come in handy, but I sure hope so.” Lieu snorted from the floor.

“I feel sorry for the poor person whose arm you break.” Amon laughed outright at that and slumped forward, tossing the towel onto Lieu’s face. He made a noise but didn’t move aside from folding his hands up onto his chest, holding his kali sticks together. “I’m going to have a hell of a bruise on my back in the morning.”

“I’m sorry.”

“Don’t be, that was very good. If you keep up like this, you’re going to be a better fighter than I am.” Lieu reached up and pulled the cloth away from his face to watch Amon instead, eyebrows raised. “Just please don’t learn how to do backflips or I’m going to be out of a job.”

“What, from standing, or from a jump? Because if it’s from a jump—“

“No,” the Lieutenant raised a hand. “Don’t say it. I’m going to pretend I’m not as old as I am and not think about you catching up to me.” Amon quieted down as soon as Lieu mentioned his age, and they sat in the quiet for a few minutes together, both of them staring at the ceiling, until Amon flopped over and lay down on the cool stone of the sparring floor next to his Lieutenant, folding his hands over his stomach.

“I’ve been thinking.” Lieu grunted, showing he was listening, and waited. “About what happened that night. With Tarrlok.” Lieu waited, waited until Amon continued. “About...me. Do you really think that was the Avatar state?”

“It sounded like everything I’ve ever heard about the Avatar state.” Amon nodded, slightly. Listening. Soaking it up. Thinking. “The glowing eyes, the full use of the elements—or element. Together your Airbending and that make me think that there’s...a possibility.”

“It doesn’t make any sense.” Amon huffed a breath, whistling slightly, through his mask. “I don’t understand why _I_ have access to the Avatar state. I’m not the Avatar. That’s Korra of the Southern Water Tribe.” He turned his head to look at Lieu, and he turned his head to look back. “She’s Avatar Aang’s reincarnation, there’s confirmed evidence of her bending multiple elements. I’ve seen _photos._ ”

“But there’s never been any evidence that she can Airbend,” Lieu replied, and he raised his hand, pointing. “Not to mention that she never recognised any items from Avatar Aang’s life.” That wasn’t commonly known information—but they had ferreted it out. “She may not have any sort of connection to the Spirit World. If she doesn’t, where did those go?”

“There’s only ever been _one Avatar,_ though.” Lieu could tell Amon was frowning from his voice. “One master of four elements with untold past lives. There’s never been two.”

“I’ve always thought there should be two.” The Lieutenant said, half-shrugging. “There’s been historical precedent of Avatars who refused to hold their position or make any effort toward balancing the world, and there’s been precedent for Avatars who used their skills for selfish goals and personal gain. If there were two, they could balance each other, control each other when it came to bad decisions, and make better judgments.”

“But it’s never happened.”

“No, it hasn’t.” They fell silent again, laying there on the sparring floor, before finally Lieu sighed. “My father fought in the Hundred Years War,” he began, and he could hear the rustle as Amon turned to look at him. He stared resolutely at the ceiling. Didn’t think about it. “He was part of the Fire Nation occupation in the Earth Kingdom, and after the war, he met Avatar Aang. He told us stories as children all about Aang, his life, what he did during the war. According to my father, Aang didn’t have to be in danger to activate the Avatar State. He could do it through meditation, to enter the Spirit World.” He looked over at Amon, whose pale grey eyes watched him back. “You could try that."

Amon watched him, and then reached up to rub at the nose of his mask. “They never did try that,” he said at last, and shrugged one shoulder. “Giving it a shot wouldn’t hurt.” 

“I think you should.”

Amon nodded, and slowly rolled to his feet, moving with the limber ease of a teenager, and bent over, offered a hand to Lieu. “Come on.” He sighed. “But...maybe I’ll try it later.”

Lieu took his leader’s hand, and decided that was a good enough response for now.

\----- 

Five times, Amon tried meditating. On his own, with his Lieutenant. When he should have been sleeping, when he should have been awake. Instead of meetings, instead of sparring. Five times, he tried. Five times, it was merely meditation. Deep thinking, deep breathing. The quiet of only his own, empty mind and his own, comfortable body.

And the sixth time, something deep inside him _clicked,_ like a key going into a lock he hadn’t known had existed. Puzzle pieces he’d never examined slotting together with perfectly correct edges.

It was a hazy memory later, like something he had concocted in a dream. Disconnected images all in oversaturated colours, sounds that distorted and twisted to become strange and unfamiliar. The Spirit World reached out to him, and within it he found answers.

A man who smiled, with arrows tattooed on his skin, who shelved no blame. Secrets. The truth. 

\-----

Amon awoke.

He was sitting on a nondescript bed in a nondescript room, hands folded on his lap, staring vaguely at a wall. His eyes were dry—they had been open too long, and almost immediately, he bent over to take his mask off and started rubbing at them to try and get them wet again.

“How long was I gone?” Amon asked, finally, when his eyes had stopped burning, and he leaned his face into the heels of his palms to rest his eyes. He could feel Lieu watching him—he had to be nearby.

“About two hours. You missed dinner.” Amon grunted. That seemed so _small_ on the scale, now. Dinner could happen later. It wasn’t pressing. Groaning, he uncovered his eyes and flopped backwards on the older man’s bed, stretching out his legs after having them crossed for so long, and looked at the ceiling before he turned to look more at the Lieutenant instead.

He was sitting at his desk, a pile of half-done paperwork resting on the table in front of him, and Amon wasn’t really sure if he’d actually been doing it—he looked stricken and scared, eyes wide, unusually pale even for him. Which meant he’d been watching—which meant he’d seen.

“What happened?”

“Uh.” He reached up and rubbed at his chin. Unsure of how to answer. “Your hair floated a bit, and your eyes glowed, and you basically just sat there for two hours. It wasn’t all that interesting.” Still, the Lieutenant’s eyes were wide. Not scared, no: never scared, not with him. Amon wasn’t sure the man possessed the capability to be scared. 

His eyes were wide in awe. 

“It was...” Amon began, unsure of what exactly he was supposed to say. “Strange. One minute I was here, and then I was in the Spirit World the next. It’s not like this world is, it’s. Brighter, louder, emptier. I met Aang.” The Lieutenant didn’t say anything, just sat, waited for the explanation. “In some ways, you were right. And in some ways I was.”

“What do you mean?”

“I’m...” how did he explain it? How was there a good way to put it into words? “Avatar Aang told me that during the Hundred Years War, he was struck by a bolt of lightning while in the Avatar State.”

“That was by Azula, Fire Lord Zuko’s sister, right?”

Amon nodded. “Apparently, he died, just for a moment. Supposedly, dying while in the Avatar state ends the cycle, except that Katara healed him fast enough to prevent that from happening. When he died, though...” Amon shook his head and sighed. “What Aang said was that somehow, with his second death, the position split.” 

“So there are...two Avatars?” Lieu raised his eyebrows, and Amon shook his head.

“No. There’s one Avatar, but powers split in two. I can connect to the Spirit World, and I can Airbend. Korra has the earthly elements. Aang said he didn’t really have any ideas about what we were supposed to do either. He didn’t realise there were two of us until recently, when no matter what he tried he couldn’t get into contact with Korra. At the very least, he said what I’m doing with the Equalists seems like the right thing to him.” Amon didn’t add that Aang had said it seemed _extreme._ Sometimes, you had to fight fire with fire, if just long enough to burn the two flames to ashes.

“So what do we do now?” Lieu, always pragmatic, always the planner. He was tapping his fingers against the top of his desk, and his brow was scrunched up with thought. “Announce it?”

“I—“ Amon choked. “No. No. Not at all.” He pressed his hands into his face again and rolled onto his side on the older man’s bed. “I don’t...it’s not my place to march into the South Pole and tell Korra that the person she thought she’s been her whole life she. Isn’t.” He didn’t want to think about when she found out on her own. Eventually, she would realise no matter what she tried, she wouldn’t be able to Airbend. She would put the pieces together on her own, in time. And it would be bad enough then without him breaking the news like a punch to the face.

“So are we keeping it a secret?” The reproach in Lieu’s voice was palpable—Amon knew what he wanted. He wanted Amon to embrace it. To lead. To be the Avatar as he was meant to be. 

He wasn’t the person to do that. He never had been, and he never would be.

“Hiroshi needs to know,” he said, at last, and sighed. “But just Hiroshi. I don’t want to tell anybody else. Let Beifong and Tarrlok think that night was something they imagined, or a trick of the light, or a fluke, or whatever. I don’t want to be involved with what they want me to do.” Amon didn’t know what he wanted to do himself—sometimes he didn’t think he could do what Lieu and Hiroshi believed he could do. He couldn’t be an Avatar. That was...too much. “But not more than that.” 

“All right.” Without his goggles, Lieu’s pale blue eyes watched him carefully, but they were proud. Lieu was often proud of him, but it never ceased to mean as much. “Whatever you want to do, Amon.” He reached out and brushed Amon’s hair out of his face with gentle fingers, and he stared at the ceiling, sighed at the touch against his head. “It’s your decision, not anybody else’s.”

“Thank you.” 

At some point he fell asleep without meaning to, and never once did Lieu stop stroking his hair.

\----- 

“We’re backed in in three places,” At sixteen, somewhere, Amon’s voice had dropped another half an octave and finally seemed like it was going to stick at some place that, if Lieu had given in to some of his more poetic thoughts, sounded somewhat like melted caramel. “I want everyone to split up with your teams.” He tapped at the table, moving the markers for the units. “Akuji, you and your six need to go in through the sewers, starting around the perimeter and then acting as distractions. Ruki, you’re gong to take to the rooftops and clear us all a route for escape; make sure that there’s a ladder for Akuji’s group to get out from. Jun, you’re going to take the streets and clear anybody you can find and assist Akuji in the case of the police showing up.” Amon looked up—he was taller now, too. The top of his head was getting to the point that he could nearly clear Lieu’s shoulder—matched with his deep voice and his face hidden behind an impassive mask, with his too-sharp mind, he could have been so much older.

Sometimes, Lieu almost wished that he was.

“Lieutenant, you and I are going to go with Hano through the front door.” 

“Yes, sir.” Amon might have been sixteen, but he thought and led like a man decades older. The Lieutenant would trust him with his life. He looked to their four team leaders, standing waiting for orders to be dismissed. “Split up, go brief your teams, and wait for the signal. Be at your start points in fifty minutes, and don’t forget to tell everyone where the meet point is.” If anybody got separated, either by fighting or simply by being lost, they would meet there, and at the end of the mission they would get picked up.

The team leaders nodded and the meeting broke up, each of them slipping back on their masks and heading up to rendezvous with their group, while the Lieutenant picked up their markers and rolled up the map to tuck it away, looking sidelong through his goggles at Amon.

He was in his thinking pose, arms folded behind his back, staring down at the ground. The Lieutenant couldn’t see his eyes or his face, but he knew that if he could have, Amon’s brow would be furrowed. Despite his gaining maturity, the younger man had been...somewhat detached, lately. Thoughtful. Incredibly thoughtful. He meditated every day, often for hours of his time, usually when he should have been sleeping. He’d taken to avoiding the Lieutenant’s eyes.

“Amon?” Lieu asked after a moment, tamping down the map. The young man jumped, his shoulders starting, and he looked at his Lieutenant with his grey eyes a little too wide.

“Just last minute anxieties,” Amon replied, almost too-fast, stumbling slightly over his words for a man who spent so much time practicing his speaking. Lieu hadn’t even asked. It fell quiet again in the office as Lieu tidied away the last pieces of their maps and got ready to go, before Amon said, “Lieutenant—Lieu. I have a question.”

They weren’t really in a hurry—their rendezvous point was only a short walk. They could spare a few minutes talking, certainly. “What is it?”

Amon paused, his head tilted slightly, clearly thinking over each and every word before he said it. Like he was about to make a speech. Finally, he sighed heavily and looked over at his Lieutenant. “What do you do when you are. Attracted. To someone.” His voice cracked slightly and he looked to the side—Lieu was pretty sure if Amon had had the skin to do it and he could have seen his face, the young man would have been _blushing._

That was...not really the question he had been expecting but. All right. After all, Lieu had become his mentor, so it wasn’t all that surprising. He probably should have expected it earlier, considering Amon was stuck right in the golden age of puberty. “Well,” he reached up to scratch at the side of his head through his mask, “You...tell them. That’s the best way to do it. Ask them out on a date of some kind. Make clear your interest, and see if it’s returned.” He shrugged one shoulder. “I mean, I’ve not really been involved with anybody in about fifteen years, so it might be different for kids your age now,” he could almost _see_ Amon bristle like a bearporcupine at the statement, but he didn’t redact it, “But I think that’s always the best way to go about it. 

Amon finished listening, and then nodded very slowly. Like he was making up his mind about something he had been debating about for a very long time, before he looked up to start Lieu straight in the eyes and squared his shoulders, took a deep breath, and said,

“I. Find myself attracted to you. And I’d like to know if you would like to go out for noodles some night, and perhaps...attempting to pursue. A relationship.”

Lieu blinked. And then he blinked a second time, and then he let out a long slow breath. Oh. Well then. That had...not been what he was expecting.

“Amon, I—“ there wasn’t any good way to say this. “Look. I care about you...an incredible amount. And I’m not going to say you’re like a son to me, because you’re not. You’re very mature for your age, and I’m not going to say I don’t think you’re attractive, because you’re certainly handsome. But. I’m...twenty years older than you.” He sighed. “I’m forty three, you’re sixteen. That’s...not. Something that people do. If you were older but...I’m sorry. There’s someone your age for you out there.”

Amon kept looking at him, and then cleared his throat. “Yes. Of course.” He shook himself. “I’ll. Meet you at the signal then.” He quickly walked to the door of their meeting room and froze, his hand half-outstretched to the handle, before he whispered, “Can we just pretend that never...”

“Yeah,” Lieu said, and Amon’s hood nodded jerkily before he left the room and the Lieutenant stayed standing there, awkwardly holding a map, staring after him, and then finally sighed.

It was the right thing to do, and they both knew it. But it didn’t mean that...it didn’t have to sting.

\----- 

It was a fairly quiet afternoon in Republic City. Amon was sleeping, which was good, because he hadn’t in a few days. Lieu was reading a book Hiroshi had loaned him about some complex electrical discoveries over in Ba Sing Se, very interesting stuff.

It was quiet, but that was before a very confused, and slightly worried, Equalist hurried into his office without even knocking. The disruption woke Amon, who sat up from the couch almost immediately, and stopped Lieu in mid-sentence. They both stared at the Equalist, who had her mask off, and was panting for breath. She looked between the both of them.

“Sir,” she said, finally, unclear which one of them she was talking to. “There’s...” She paused, and swallowed. 

“Avatar Korra is here,” Amon said it before she could finish. He said it with the finality that meant that he _knew._ “She is in Republic City.” The Equalist stared back at him and finally nodded, mutely.

“Yes, sir. She arrived earlier this afternoon. She caused trouble over in Triple Threat territory, wrecked a couple of shops, and then was taken in by the police. That’s the last we heard of her.”

It was quiet among the three of them for a moment before the Lieutenant looked over at Amon, at his passive mask but his tense shoulders. “Amon,” he prompted at last, and the young man turned to look over at him, “How do you want to handle this?”

They had known all along that she would come to Republic City. Lieu had guessed, and Amon had clearly expected, that when she did, it was going to change him. He was going to have to accept some things about himself. He was going to need to learn to be someone else.

They had two Avatars, and it was no doubt that if Korra had come to Republic City, was to be one of them. How long until she figured it out? How long did they have before Amon _had_ to come forward?

After a long moment, Amon sighed and stood, adjusting his uniform. “If the Avatar has arrived in Republic City,” he said with a finality that the Lieutenant hadn’t heard in his voice in a long time, a control, an _understanding—_ “Then we shall have to accelerate our plans.”

Take over Republic City. Oust the troublesome Bender leadership that continued to destroy the lives of thousands of Non-Benders. Stage a revolution. Change the world, all before Avatar Korra had a chance to get settled, before she could figure out what she was missing. Before she could stop them. 

“Mei-Yi,” Amon said to the Equalist, who snapped to attention, “Gather all the team leaders. Send a wire to Hiroshi. Bring everyone here.” He paused, and when he next spoke, the Lieutenant could swear that he could hear a _grin_ in the words, “We have a lot of work to do, and we had best get started.”


	3. interlude : the midnight and the dawn

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> death is the solution that only cowards take; there is always an answer of strength for the brave of heart.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> an interlude, made up of three scenes that each don't match well with either the previous or the coming chapter. (yeah, i know this is kind of cheating as an update, shhhh).

interlude : the moonlight and the dawn

 

“She has been in this city for less than a day,” Amon whispered, his voice shaking with barely-contained rage, his fingers clenched white-knuckled around the corner of the newspaper article that had been given to him, crumpling the paper. “She has been in this city for less than _a day_ and already property damage. Three people _in the hospital,_ one of them in critical condition. Two civilians injured.” He crumpled the paper the rest of the way, crushing the black and white photograph of the damage that Korra had caused fighting the Triads, and his grey eyes flashed with anger. “Who does this girl think she is?”

“She thinks she’s invincible,” Hiroshi replied, frowning, messing with the wires on one of the shock glove prototypes. They were in the man’s underground basement, surrounded by half-finished engineering projects. Lieu had brought Amon over because he was pretty sure that the younger man was reaching the point where he might have spontaneously combusted out of anger if he didn’t get out and do something.

“I don’t care what she thinks she is, the issue is what she thinks she can do.” Amon tossed down the ruined newspaper and began to pace. He kept making small balls of air spin in his hands without noticing. “She’s going to get someone killed, and it’s going to be one of ours.”

“Amon, everyone in our ranks knows what they signed up for,” Lieu pointed out, but the younger man didn’t stop pacing.

“That doesn’t mean I want to send anybody into a potentially deadly situation,” Amon growled. Lieu couldn’t see anything behind his mask, just the pent-up rage coiled in his shoulders. “I hate doing it against the police, but with Korra...” With the police, death was a small possibility. With Korra, it appeared, death was an inevitable outcome.

“Then we think of ways to avoid having to confront her as long as possible,” the Lieutenant said, shrugging as he picked up a blueprint and squinted at it in the low light. “If we do have to go against her, I’ll take her on.” Amon froze, his shoulders jumping. The Lieutenant almost didn’t notice. Almost. “Better it be me than someone untrained and unprepared. I would at least stand a chance.”

Amon didn’t say anything for a long moment of time, and then closed his fist, the air in his palm vanishing.

“What did you say about those gloves, Hiroshi?”

The Lieutenant sighed, and shook his head, He didn’t say anything else. He wasn’t going to push it.

 

\-----

 

_What am I supposed to do?_ Amon asked, looking at his past life. _She doesn’t have any concept that fighting fire with fire isn’t the answer. She’s already antagonised the Triads, and now they attack Non-Benders even more. There were four deaths in the past week. I have no way to stop her, Aang. No way to stop her, and nothing I can do to them that they won’t respond to with more violence._ There was fear in his voice. Since Korra had come to the city he had hardly been able to sleep, let alone quiet his mind enough to meditate. But he had to. He had to. He had no answers, he had nobody left to turn to. Nobody but his past self.

_There is a way,_ Aang said, his expression clouded. _You do not want violence, and it is clear that violence is the only answer to be found. I will teach you, but you must not abuse it._

_I shall not,_ Amon promised. _I shall not._

 

\-----

 

It was a quiet night atop the roof of the apartment building that Lieu lived in in Republic city. Tonight everyone was out watching some Pro-Bending game, yelling, excited shouting. Instead, Amon and the Lieutenant were sitting nearly silent on top of a building, watching the stars. 

For the past week, Amon had been closed-lipped about their upcoming rally. He had said, unusually cryptically, that there would be a ‘revelation’, but not what. He had been quiet, withdrawn, scared. He had barely been talking—even less than usual.

Tonight, drinking hot tea while his Lieutenant drank sake, he seemed more talkative than he had in days. “The constellations here are so different,” Amon began, out of the quiet. “They’re so much...dimmer, and in places they don’t go.”

“Well, the light pollution doesn’t help the visibility.” Lieu took a sip of sake and looked back down at the city—the glow of streetlights, the ever-present glare of the Arena, lit up in the darkness. Apartment windows, each and every one reflecting the inside lights of people who were home. “I think that’s a lot less of a problem at the North Pole.”

“It is,” Amon replied. He had taken his mask off, and it was odd—Lieu kept expecting to look over and see the glow of the porcelain, but instead he would look over and see the jagged shadows spattered across the younger man’s face, reflecting the whorls and knots of his skin. The steam from the tea kept wafting up around his face, flowing over his skin. “I like the stars here better. It’s nice to watch them with someone you care for.”

“Yeah.” 

It got quiet between them again. In the distance, the sound of a violin began to play from a phonograph, the scratchy singing of the strings filling the night air. A car horn honked, and another one honked back. Someone shouted, and a baby began to cry. 

The city continued on, as the city was wont to do. Regardless of the horrors that hid in the shadows, Republic City would keep going.

“Amon,” Lieu asked, staring up into the sky, his thick jacket keeping the cooler air of the wind atop the building from cutting through to his skin, “What is your revelation?”

He hadn’t explained it, simply demanded it be included. He had designed their requirements for the rally, but not said what he would reveal, what decision he would publicise.

Amon was quiet in response to the question, before he sighed heavily, and the Lieutenant looked over to see the young man’s face entirely in shadow underneath his hood, his fingers clenched around his mug.

“Do you remember,” he whispered, “What happened to Yakone?”

Yakone. The notorious gangster who had paved the way for the Triads, who had terrorised Republic City, nearly killed several council members. The Bloodbending nightmare that had covered the early years of Republic city.

The Lieutenant rememebred, although he had not been born yet. He remembered from the stories he had heard when he came to the city, the fear that still hid in the eyes of anybody faced with the Triads. What if someone like Yakone happened again? What if there was another, when their Avatar could not come and save them?

“Avatar Aang removed his Bending, somehow.” Lieu sipped his Sake. “I don’t think I’ve ever heard two versions of the account that agreed. Apparently there were no witnesses, except that afterward Yakone had no Bending at all.”

“It’s called Energybending, and he was taught it by an ancient creature.” Amon sighed again, heavier, his shoulder shaking this time. “I asked him...what to do. Korra keeps antagonising the Triads, she keeps attacking people randomly. Soon enough, people are going to start dying—either Korra or the Triads are going to get civilians killed, and we’ll be blamed, Lieu. They’ll put the blood on our hands because we’re easy to target.”

“What did he say?”

“Avatar Aang taught me how to Energybend. It’s...I’ve always known, I feel. Since I was born. I’ve known what he knew. And now I can use that knowledge.” Amon looked up at him, and in the light of the moon, his grey eyes seemed so much older.

Amon, the boy, might only be seventeen, but there was something insied him so much older. Centuries, millenia. He was inhabited by something so strong and so powerful that there was no telling how far back it stretched. He was older than the Lieutenant would ever be—and yet younger than he ever seemed.

“I’m going to stop the Triads,” Amon said it with finality, with a strength of conviction, that belied the shaking in his hands. He had an outcome he must fulfil, even if it was hard, even if he was scared. 

“You’re going to take their Bending,” Lieu replied at last, as the pieces slotted into place. If the only recourse to any action they took would be violence, why not remove the ability to create that violence?

Amon nodded. The Lieutenant smiled.

“It’s about time that somebody did.”


End file.
